In a study published in the April 2012 edition of the journal Hydrobiologia, scientists from the University of British Columbia examined data for numerous species of jellyfish in ecosystems around the world. They found increasing jellyfish populations in 62 per cent of the regions they analyzed, including East Asia, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, the Northeast U.S. Shelf, Hawaii, and Antarctica.

Lucas Brotz, lead author of the study, said:

There has been anecdotal evidence that jellyfish were on the rise in recent decades, but there hasn’t been a global study that gathered together all the existing data until now.

Our study confirms these observations scientifically after analysis of available information from 1950 to the present for more than 138 different jellyfish populations around the world.

Bottom line: In a study published in the April 2012 edition of the journal Hydrobiologia, scientists from the University of British Columbia say that jellyfish are increasing in the majority of the world’s coastal ecosystems.